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The Most Important Skill In Life (It's Not What You Think)

What do you think is the most important skill in life? I recently asked my co-workers this question, and I heard:

“The ability to focus.”

“Communication skills.”

“Inspiring others to greatness.”

These are wonderful skills, but I don’t think they are paramount. For me, the most important skill in life is mastering how to get happy and stay happy. Another way of saying it is, mastering our emotions.

What’s so important about mastering our emotions?

When you have mastered your emotions, you can pick and choose how you feel at any given point in time, no matter what else is happening around you. You can choose to be happy, even when “Rome is burning” behind you.

And when you are happy, you can do all those other things that people mentioned, i.e., focus, communicate, lead others to greatness. You are free to do your best and most inspired work.

The most important skill in life may not be what you think it is.

Getting happy and staying happy is about taking responsibility for your feelings. It’s about mastering your emotions, and ultimately, yourself.

The saying, “Own your own actions and set yourself free,” has had a profound impact on my life. Except that it’s not enough to own your own actions: you also have to own your own feelings in order to have true personal freedom.

One of the reasons it’s so hard to get happy and stay happy is that we allow others to “own” our emotions. How many times have you heard: “He made me so mad when he [insert offensive action],” or “She really pissed me off in that meeting!”

When you say, “So-and-so made me mad,” you’re saying that power lies with the other person. They made you mad. They have the power to control your feelings.

But actually, they didn’t and they don’t. You chose to get mad. You chose to stay mad. You chose to hold yourself apart from happiness.

We have to take responsibility not only for our actions, but also for our emotions. Many people go through life like Pavlov’s dogs, triggered to emotional responses by events that are “outside of their control.” If we operate unconsciously based upon our triggers, we’ll go through life feeling like a victim, a pinball bouncing back and forth between “external forces.”

“I got promoted, yay, I’m happy.”

“That jerk Mark threw me under the bus at work, I’m mad.”

I did that for many years, until a mentor asked me, “When are you going to finally make the connection between you and all your problems? They all start with YOU.”

The path to self-mastery and happiness starts with accepting responsibility for your feelings and taking back the power you have inappropriately given to other people or life events.

How do we get happy and stay happy? How do we master our emotions?

Like all skills, mastering emotions takes practice. I started by paying attention to my every thought and feeling. You can’t know if you’re losing control of your feelings if you don’t know how you’re feeling at any given moment. Staying present is the key.

When you’re present to your feelings, you can always ask yourself, “Do I want to continue feeling the way I’m feeling right now?”

If the answer is “no,” then the next step is to choose how you want to feel. Your feelings are controlled almost 100% by your thoughts (in case it’s not obvious, I’m excluding people with clinical depression), so if you’re unhappy, it is most likely because you’ve been thinking negative thoughts. If you’re going around thinking, “I’m a failure, my boss sucks, I’m underpaid, no one loves me, people are toxic, my life is hell,” then you are most likely feeling crappy.

To break the cycle of negativity, choose to change your thoughts.

There is literally a smorgasbord of thoughts from which we can pick and choose to fill our mental plate at any given moment. What works for me is to practice an attitude of gratitude, because gratitude and happiness are powerfully linked. This isn’t just my opinion – a tremendous amount of research supports the conclusion that your happiness and well-being are deeply intertwined with how thankful you are.

Sometimes you’re not feeling particularly grateful. I’ve been there. But there has to be SOMETHING you’re grateful for, even if it’s small, even if it’s ridiculous. There was a time in my life when I was losing my business, taking on all of its debts, and feeling tremendously guilty and ashamed for putting my employees out of jobs. I was sitting in my car bawling when suddenly I noticed I was wallowing in self-pity.

I didn’t want to continue feeling that debilitatingly bad, so I grudgingly started up my mental “gratitude” list…except in that moment, I didn’t feel grateful for much. The only thing that came to mind was, “I have clean socks on.” Ridiculous, I know. But that thought led to gratitude for my husband (who had washed my socks), gratitude for my impending motherhood (I was eight months pregnant), and eventually, gratitude for all the lessons I had learned as the proprietor of a failed business. I was able to pull myself together to a place of peace – if not outright happiness – and move forward with closing down shop.

No, as of today, I have not yet completely mastered my every emotion. I cannot claim to always be in a state of happiness. I’ve still got much work to do. Mastering the emotions requires constant integration and constant practice, and for those who choose to pursue this most important skill in life, our work is not done until our last breath.

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What are the top ten cause of unhappiness? 1. Low job satisfaction 2. Low sexual satisfaction 3. Partner issues 4. Health issues. We need to learn to accept things that we can not change. Becoming happy everyday is next to impossible, since happiness and sadness are part and parcel of the world.

I agree that becoming happy every day is hard, but I think we can do it with practice. I respectfully disagree that “happiness and sadness are part and parcel of the world.” To me, things happen in life, but whether we are happy or sad about them is up to us. I believe that with practice, we can choose to feel however we want to feel about anything. The more we take personal responsibility for our lives, the more power we give ourselves to change things, even those top four causes of unhappiness that you mentioned. In other words, if I’m unhappy because I have low job satisfaction, then it’s my responsibility to change my job situation to one where I am happy – either by working things out at my current job, or by finding a new one. It doesn’t serve me – or anyone else in the world – to just accept that I have low job satisfaction and view it as something I cannot change.

Maryling Yu, It’s true what you say that we can choose the kinds of thoughts that we experience on our daily lives, and how it affects our experience. David Foster Wallace masterfully expressed this topic during his Kenyon commencement speech. (This Is Water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzFNh2_dSBg) But, Maryling Yu, even the Dali Lama experiences sadness, in such times as the death of a friend, for example; he more than any one else in the world has practiced the art of mastering his emotions, and cultivating happiness and kindness. So exactly who are you to tell people that sadness doesn’t need to exist, if even the Dalai lama says that is part of experiencing life? The trick is to experience your emotions, but not ruminate on negative thoughts, but don’t be so naive as think you can banish all sadness from your life.

Thank you for your comment. I actually am in 100% agreement with you. I did not intend to suggest in my article that all sadness ought to be banished, and that no one should ever feel sadness or any negative emotions at all. All I am suggesting is that we can take responsibility for our emotions – we don’t have to be “forced” into any emotional state by the goings-on around us. Of course we will feel sadness at the death of a friend or a loved one…that is a natural part of the human experience. The human ability to love also renders us vulnerable to the grief and heartache that come with loss.

But as you said so beautifully, the idea is to choose to fully experience and honor those emotions. My only addition is, know that you are choosing to experience those emotions, and know that it is your choice to stay in those emotions for however long you choose to stay in them. If it serves you to grieve (and it always does), then stay there (but know that it is your choice). If it serves you to heal and move to peace again, then do that (but again, know that it is your choice). I guess the crux of what I am saying is, we don’t get to point the finger at anyone but ourselves when it comes to how we are feeling or what we are thinking…the sooner we recognize that the buck stops with us, the closer we can move towards self-mastery.

Excellent advice and article. Practice daily NOT TO REACT and, like practicing the piano, one day you will wake up and feel like a new person — you will disarm those who, intentionally or unintentionally, wittingly or unwittingly, push your buttons. It’s all about maturing and becoming a friend to the child within.

I was really surprised that you excluded clinical depression from your article. I was clinically depressed for many years. I took medications and went to therapy with psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and went to group therapy. However, none of that worked. I then had a revealing moment like the one you had when you lost your business. Last year I published a book called “Clinical Depression and The Stalker Within” where I describe how you can overcome depression by taking control of your thoughts and negative feelings. I labeled my negative thoughts the “stalker within.” I essentially worked to separate my negative thoughts from my life by giving them a separate identity. Thus, I disagree with you that your approach does not apply to clinical depression. However, I can understand that many clinically depressed people might have written nasty comments if you had implied that. However, people need to become aware that we can always work with our emotions and take control of them if we choose. There are people with schizophrenia that have managed to remain productive by taking control of their emotions and thoughts as well. Anyone who disagrees should watch the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” which is based on a true story about the life and work of John Forbes Nash Jr., a famed economist, who suffered from paranoia and schizophrenia. The bottom line is that if you suffer from major depression or schizophrenia taking medications and going to psychotherapy will definitely help. However, the key to conquering them will depend on whether you can learn to control your emotions and your thoughts. I have a website called Clinical Depression at www.clinicaldepressionandthestalkerwithin.com where I also write a blog about how to use your thoughts to manage your emotions when you are clinically depressed. I was perplexed as I read your article because it was like I was reading my own blog! I really appreciated your comments. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and educational comment. Honestly, I did not include clinical depression because I have no understanding of it, and did not want to overreach or seem insensitive to people with chemical imbalances in their brains, given my ignorance of that condition.

Given your own expertise and experiences, you would be in a far better position than I am to comment on how those with clinical depression would use these same principles to gain control of their own thoughts and emotions. It is heartening to hear that you were able to overcome these challenges. Thank you for sharing!